Movie mega-mogul went from gangsters to “Sound of Music”
Sometime, try to name the old-time movie moguls.
You might come up with the guys who put their names on studios – Disney, Warner, Goldwyn, Mayer. You probably wouldn’t say Darryl Zanuck, who may have topped them all in quantity and quality.
“He wasn’t a one-trick pony,” author/historian Scott Eyman said by phone. “The others found a groove and couldn’t get out of it.”
Eyman’s previous 15 books have ranged from John Wayne to Cecil B. DeMille. Now comes “20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio” (Running Press). It traces Zanuck from gritty gangster films to the CinemaScope sprawl of “The Robe,” “The Sound of Music” (shown here) and beyond. “He sensed what the public was going to like before the public got there.” Read more…